The entrepreneurial science writer

UCSC science writing program
May 10, 2011
David harris
@physicsdavid
www.thephotonist.net
The entrepreneurial science writer

The entrepreneurial science writer
The old business models of journalism are in trouble
This is an opportunity
To take advantage of an opportunity like this, you need to be an entrepreneur
Your business is you and your skills

Strategies
Build and know your skills
Know the market
Market yourself
Work with people who excite you

Tactics for marketing yourself
Build a personal brand
A personal brand is how others feel about you in their gut and heart
Know everybody
Do favors (but still get paid)
Add value to others’ lives
Be active in the science writing community
Be active in other communities

Tools for marketing yourself
Meetings and conferences
Go to them
Use them for the networks as much as the content
Activities outside science writing
Participate for the networking
Participate to broaden your interests
Social media
Learn how it truly works
Use it effectively

Your social media use
Who in this room does each of these?
uses facebook
uses twitter
uses LinkedIn
has a blog/tumblr/posterous
is in some specialist social network
uses social bookmarking
regularly posts video/audio?

What is social media?
“Social media involves a natural, genuine conversation between people about something of mutual interest, a conversation built on the thoughts and experiences of those participants. It is about sharing and arriving at a collective point, often for the purpose of making a better or more-informed choice.”
– Dave Evans

What is social media?
“Social media is the media we use to be social.”
– Lon Safko

Why care about social media?
Our trade is information
Information is flowing in new ways due to social media
We need to understand those ways to take advantage of them
It gives us new ways to think about what we do
Social media is a disruptive force on traditional media

10 uses of social media for science writers
Finding/tracking breaking events
Reporting on events as rapidly as possible
Observing remote events/conferences
Participating in remote events/conferences
Finding ideas and commissioning stories
Finding sources
Building community (among peers & readers)
“Meeting” new people -> meeting new people
Hearing about useful events
Spreading ideas, generating secondary pickup/stories

Evolution of Information Ecosystems
Authority relationships
Trust relationships
Personal networks
Trusted authorities

The secret life of social media
Key points:
It often doesn’t work the way you imagine or the way it claims to
It can be quite complicated and you really need to understand it to take advantage of it
Social bookmarking as a case study
See a full presentation on this from NASW 2009 at: http://bit.ly/9dip5J

Fundamental rule of social media
It’s just a tool
or
It’s a tactic not a strategy
or
The technology is not the sociology

Corollaries of the fundamental rule
Social media is often not about the content itself: It is often the meta-content or the distribution
Social media offers a chance for you to be entrepreneurial in reaching new audiences (case study: book publicity)
You’ve written the story, now get it to the people
Social media can be particularly useful to science writers as science interest is a non-geographically-specified niche.

Use the right tool for the right purpose
Q: When would you use a facebook status update vs twitter update?
Q: What’s the main difference between facebook and MySpace?
Q: Why would you blog with LiveJournalvs Blogger vsWordPressvsTumblrvs … ?
Q: What’s the difference between email and a twitter stream?
Q: How do individuals matter in social media?

It’s the community, stupid
The use of social media tools is inextricably linked with the kinds of communities you wish to include, create, connect with, or be part of.
The sociology is not really new in most cases. However, the power of the tools is much greater.
There is a loose community of science fans who previously could only coalesce around popular science magazines. Q: What does social media offer?

Journalists’ concerns
How does a journalist navigate the private-public spectrum that replaces the old private/public separation? (Risks and opportunities.)
What is happening to the gatekeeper role of journalism? (Middleman problem. The importance of filters.)
Can journalists beat the sources to breaking news any more? (The role of scoops. Scientists who blog.)
What value does a journalist add? (Will “just the facts” cut it? Content vs. context vs. analysis)

Adoption of social media by science writers
Where are the science writers’ social networks? Are you part of them?
Why are science writers so slow to adopt social media and so resistant to it?
How will you cope with being seen as the expert on social media in your next job, just because you are young?

Planning social media strategies
Remember the fundamental rule: it’s a tactic not a strategy
As a tactic, you should experiment to see what works. If it works, keep it up (at least until something changes). If not, abandon it (at least until something changes).
Cost of failure is low if you haven’t invested lots of time. The tech makes it easy to do without large time investments.
A social media plan should naturally derive from a communications plan. It shouldn’t take long to plan.

Collaboration
An insufficiently answered question: How can science journalists use social media for collaboration?
Tools of social media allow for easier blending of different media types
Collaborative workspaces share many features of social networks
Tools for other social media can be put to collaborative use in science writing.
Given the technical nature of much science writing, many questions arise for readers. How can social media help with this?

Business models
Like old media, still predominantly ad-based
This means it’s all about eyeballs on ads and therefore about boosting traffic
Increased traffic is used as a proxy for just about everything else, but how valid is that? Does it matter if it’s valid?
Some new models appearing
Content is a loss leader in the form of community building. Monetized through other options, such as events. Example: thebolditalic.com
Relying on sources for content such as Journalism/PIO partnerships. Example: US News & World Report/NSF
Paywall experiments are still too young to evaluate.

Tips for entrepreneurs
Know what you do well, what value-adding you can bring, what your individuating skills are
Don’t expect opportunities to be given: you must take them
Experiment with low-investment tools
Ally yourself with disparate groups and people
Define a web presence
Act with integrity
Be confident, positive and happy
Be ambitious
Be passionate

Old media recommendations
Books:
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, 2008
Jeff Howe, Crowdsourcing, 2008
Lewis Hyde, The Gift, 1979
Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, 1965

Some new media recommendations
www.mashable.com
www.zephoria.org/thoughts
ksjtracker.mit.edu
www.niemanlab.org
www.cjr.org/the_observatory
www.readwriteweb.com/
@BoraZ

Advice via twitter
I'd suggest the first order of business is learning to write a good story. Then learn to speak a little science. @mkraptl
My advice? Persist. @tdechant
By far the most important thing is to understand the scientific method, which is important for understanding how science works @chronsciguy
New writers should learn how science operates in theory and practice. It'll help you spot things that seem fishy. @j_timmer
Understand and follow "old media" as well as new ones--we still have so much to learn from them. @dcastelvecchi

Other stuff
Some stuff from me:
Secret life of social media (slides+audio): http://bit.ly/9dip5J
What does twitter mean for breaking news stories? The ISS near-collision case study: http://bit.ly/bz6wEk
Some articles:
How Freelancers are Using Social Media for Real Results http://bit.ly/b0be4m
Why Social Media Reinvigorates the Market for Quality Journalism http://mashable.com/2011/04/12/social-journalism-quality/
The Future of Social Media in Journalism http://mashable.com/2010/09/13/future-social-media-journalism/

During this class
Who has read some form of social media in this class?
Who has updated some form of social media in this class?
Who had the urge to either read or post during the class?

The entrepreneurial science writer

by physicsdavid

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